Tradeweb Markets Files for IPO, Months After Blackstone Deal

(Bloomberg) -- Tradeweb Markets Inc., the bond and derivative platform co-owned by financial-data platform Refinitiv, filed for a U.S. initial public offering, kicking off plans to go public five months after being acquired as part of a $17 billion buyout.

Tradeweb filed with an initial offering size of $100 million, typically a placeholder amount used to calculate fees that’s likely to change. The IPO is being led by JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission Thursday.

Net income at Tradeweb in 2018 was $159.5 million on revenue of $684.4 million, compared to net income of $83.6 million on revenue of $563 million a year earlier, the filing shows.

The platform could be worth more than $5 billion in an IPO, people with knowledge of the matter said Thursday, asking not to be identified as the details aren’t public. Blackstone Group LP acquired 55 percent of Refinitiv for $17 billion last year with co-investors Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and GIC, Singapore’s sovereign-wealth fund. Refinitiv will continue to own a controlling interest in Tradeweb after the IPO.

Tradeweb, formed in 1996 and based in New York, builds and operates over-the-counter marketplaces for fixed-income and derivative products. It had an average daily trading volume of more than $549 billion in 2018, the filing shows. Several large banks are among its investors, including Deutsche Bank AG, UBS Group AG and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc.

Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, competes with Thomson Reuters and Refinitiv in providing news, data and information to the financial industry.

Tradeweb applied to list shares on Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol “TW.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Matthew Monks in New York at mmonks1@bloomberg.net;Matthew Leising in Los Angeles at mleising@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Fournier at efournier5@bloomberg.net, ;Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Amy Thomson

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